Press Release, 12.11.2024

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

On 11 November, Yabloko’s deputy Olga Shtannikova presented Yabloko’s amendments to the 2025 budget at the meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee of the Legislative Assembly of St.Petersburg.

The Yabloko faction proposes increasing funding for the purchase of housing for those on the waiting list without benefits.

“Currently, 70,000 people are on the waiting list for better housing conditions in St.Petersburg, and they have been waiting for their turn for 40 years,” deputy head of the Yabloko faction Olga Shtannikova noted.

Yabloko has been seeking to increase spending on those on the waiting list and do not have any benefits for several years. The amendment was rejected, but a similar one from the government’s United Russia was accepted, although it envisaged an increase by only a billion, while Yabloko’s amendment stipulated for 2.7 billion annually during the planned period, which would have allowed at least doubling the number of families who would receive payments. It was also proposed to increase spending on resettling people from communal apartments, where each family may have a room only. With the current planned resources, the process would take 60 years.

Despite the fact that the majority of deputies refused to even discuss Yabloko’s proposals at the plenary session on Wednesday, the faction managed to convince the city administration, albeit on behalf of the governor, to change its approach to forming the reserve fund and reduce its volume from 50 to 40 billion roubles (15 out of 50 billion roubles are not spent annually).

In the first reading, Yabloko voted against the draft budget for 2025, since positive changes could not outweigh the negative trends in the formation of the city budget. In addition, there are still classified expenses, for example, citizens are not allowed to get information on how much is spent on the restoration of Mariupol and payments to participants of the special military operation.

Yabloko insists that the budget formation process, in which amendments are not even submitted to a vote in the St.Petersburg parliament without the approval of the city government, is incorrect and violates the principle of separation of powers. The faction will again make proposals to change the law “On the Budget Process”.